


I would sail across the east sea just to see you on the far side

by EponineTheStrange (gallifreyandglowclouds)



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 04:03:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyandglowclouds/pseuds/EponineTheStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Matt dies. Eventually, Karen deals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I would sail across the east sea just to see you on the far side

Karen doesn’t really get to hold him in her arms or tell him that everything’s going to be okay when he dies, because by the time that she gets back to London, his parents had already made the decision to pull him off life support and when she gets to the hospital after a solid ten hours of travel, he’s already in the morgue. 

Jenna is hysterical - and why wouldn’t she be, because she’d just seen him get flattened by a drunk driver in a crosswalk who probably only missed her and Richard by a couple of inches - but Karen cannot help, when Jenna runs up to her at the hospital and throws her arms around her and sobs, that she was potentially the one there to comfort him and cradle him before the ambulance got there (and somewhere in her mind, the result is different - something to do with the healing power of love - but when she thinks about it later, it probably wouldn’t have changed anything). 

Everyone, including Matt’s family, sort of treats Karen like she’s the bereaved girlfriend or wife, and that makes her wonder what he’s been saying about the two of them since he’d returned to the UK to film the Christmas special. No, they weren’t really dating - they had made another start in New York, when he’d kissed her outside of the Adult Swim party, or how (oops) they had more or less ditched Aislinn and Arthur for the comfort of Matt’s hotel room and each other, and even though May in New York is supposed to be the best, they had pretty much missed it all. He had popped down to Los Angeles when he had other, shorter breaks in filming, and there it had been a lot more domestic - like they were, for three or four days here and there, actually dating. 

Their last night in Los Angeles before Matt had to head back to Cardiff (and he skipped the wrap party on  _HTCAM,_ which both freaked her out and made her excited all at once) had culminated in a promise.

“You’ll come visit me when we’re back to being an ocean apart?” he had asked her, leaning back against her kitchen counter with a beer in his hand.

She had smiled at him, and had said, “You bet. If you’re really lucky, I’ll even come stay for a while.” 

“Forever?” 

“Eventually, yes.” 

He had stepped across the kitchen and boxed her in against the counter with his arms, and then whispered in her ear, “Love you, Kaz.” 

She distinctly remembers the tingles that ran up her spine at that moment, both from what he was saying but also from the way his breath was hot against her ear. 

(It wasn’t the first time that he had told her that, nor the last, but in their bright two month fling-relationship-whatever thing, it was certainly the most memorable.)

Well, that was a stupid thing for him to say to her. When she collapses on to the bed in her hotel room in Cardiff, she wants to beat up the pillow or something, because as she’s just learned, no one can promise forever.

* * *

 

 

Karen hasn’t been crying a whole lot in the week between Matt’s actual death and the funeral, but the minute his cousin walks up to the podium in the church in Northampton that’s far too small for all the people crammed in to it and starts reading  _Funeral Blues_ , she loses it and spends the rest of the service sobbing so hard that it practically hurts. 

If Laura-Jayne and Arthur weren’t both holding on to her so tight when the casket was lowered in to the ground, she probably would have fallen over, because she feels her knees give way when the dirt starts being piled over the coffin. 

Arthur doesn’t leave her alone that night, and they sit quietly in his hotel room, eating Indian takeaway even though the hotel had a rule about no hot food in the rooms. 

“This is fucking weird,” Arthur says. 

“That’s about the least I could say about the whole situation,” Karen replies, staring intently at her naan bread because it can’t talk or dredge up memories about Matt. 

“Do you remember New York?” Arthur asks. 

“Which time?” 

He rolls his eyes. “I think the three of us were only there together once - well, twice, but I didn’t see a lot of you and Matt a few months ago - but I’m thinking of the time that we were there to film the last episode.” 

She nods. 

“I just remember, we got takeaway or room service and ate it in your hotel room every night, and even though everyone was so sad because it was pretty much the end we all just laughed and threw croutons at each other and were just generally ridiculous.” 

She does remember that, and it makes her want to laugh and cry and now she’s thinking about the way that Matt used to wrap his arm around her waist whenever they were at events and stuff and how warm and wonderful his hands felt on her, and crap now she’s crying in to her lamb vindaloo. 

“God, Karen, I’m sorry,” he whispers, and puts a hand on her shoulder as she cries. 

“It isn’t your fault, Arthur,” she sobs. “It’s just the whole situation that’s making me sad.” 

* * *

 

Karen goes home for about a while after the funeral, and the fact that Matt’s mom ships her a bunch of his personal effects that she thought that Karen should have doesn’t help matters a lot. (She spends a lot of time cuddling with Charlie the badger.) 

Perhaps whoever came up with the seven stages of grief meant for them to be gone through in a sequential fashion, but she seems to be furious at the universe on some days, so depressed she can’t get out of bed on others, in complete and total denial at other points, and then sometimes she’s almost completely normal. 

People drop by and try to come and talk with her, and do whatever they can to make her feel better, but she doesn’t feel like she can talk about what she and Matt shared, because it belonged to them and no one else and now it’s just kind of done. She just spends a lot of time curled up in her sweatpants watching television. 

The only person that she finds that she can talk to about anything is Arthur - dear old Arthur - because he can actually understand what she’s missing, because he was close to Matt as well. 

(Not as close as she was. The only time the two of them kissed there had been a lot of Absinthe going around and you might as well re-name Absinthe ‘bad life decisions central’ for all the shit that has happened when Karen’s consumed it.) 

He comes up and he visits once while she’s in Inverness, and they don’t do a lot. There’s a few long walks, and a lot of staring at the ceiling and drinking tea. That’s about it. 

* * *

 

Six weeks after, Karen packs herself up once again and goes back to Los Angeles, because the listlessness that came with being at home was driving her more crazy than the grief. 

Working helps - she signs on to another little weird indie film because those seem to be what she’s good at, but it doesn’t fix everything. She kind of feels like she’s standing in a dark room right after you turn the lights off and her eyes are only beginning to adjust to the dark. 

Things get more and more normal. She spends less time watching films (which has more to do with her Blu-Ray player breaking than anything, to be fair) and more time outside. She makes friends in the US, and goes on three whole dates with the same person, but he gets weirded out by all the pictures of Matt on the mantlepiece in her apartment. 

(Those, in her mind, are non-negotiable, and are not going away for a long time. She hesitates to even think the word forever any more even if it’s what she means.) 

Arthur comes and visits in December, because apparently he’s sick of the New York weather. 

“I liked New York around Christmas the one time Matt and I went,” Karen says.

“You guys were there for what, a week?” Arthur says over the pasta that Karen makes him for dinner that night. (She can cook now. It’s kind of a new thing.) “It gets kind of shitty after that. People get mad at all the tourists. It’s not very Christmassy.”  

“Fair,” Karen says. 

“How you been?” He asks. 

“Better?” She says. “I guess. Working is helping. And it’s been nearly four months, so it’s time to move on?” 

Arthur shrugs. “I don’t think there’s an expiration stamp on grief, Kaz. You just have to feel what you have to feel.” 

There’s a pregnant pause between the two of them, and then she says, “His mom asked me to come for Christmas dinner at their house a few days ago.” 

“What?” Arthur looks a bit surprised. 

“That’s what I thought. She calls me sometimes.” 

“But… Christmas?” 

“I don’t know. I guess she thinks that I’m the closest thing that he had to a wife or a girlfriend when he died, and so she wants to think that I’m part of the family.” 

“Hmmm.” Arthur takes a sip of wine. “Are you going to say yes?” 

Karen pauses, because this is a question that she’s been turning over in her mind for ages and ages and she’s still no closer to actually figuring out a cogent answer. “I don’t think so. It’d be weird, and the thing is - I know this is going to sound incredibly strange - but I’m in this place where I don’t want to fully let go of Matt but I also don’t want every little thing that I do to be defined by him either. I just feel like if I go, then it’s going to end up being all about Matt and I don’t know if I want that.” She looks up at Arthur and says, “What do you think?” 

“I wouldn’t,” Arthur says, “because Christmas is full of loaded family stuff and that’d be like walking in to a minefield, especially with a bunch of people you don’t actually know all that well.” He pauses, takes a sip of wine, and then continues. “And, no offence, but you and Matt weren’t really doing the dating thing for all that long.” 

“Three months,” Karen says quietly. “If it had been a year or even six months or just for longer, even if he wasn’t around, I might have said yes. But we’d really just made a start, and I loved him Arthur, I really did, but we weren’t quite that connected yet.” 

“Fair,” Arthur says. He eats a couple more bites of pasta, and then raises his glass for a toast and says, “To Matthew Robert Smith, influencing our lives from beyond the grave.” 

“Amen,” Karen says, raising her glass as well. 

* * *

 

She goes home for Christmas, and then back to Los Angeles in the middle of January. Then, something entirely surprising (though, if she were one for determinism, not actually that surprising) happens in about June - she and Arthur, of all people start a relationship. 

It’s a bit weird, because she can sometimes feel Matt’s spectre there with the two of them. Arthur isn’t the person that she thought she’d ever end up with, but he’s dependable and steady, and he sort of understands the weird in-between place that she’s in with Matt (she suspects that he’s there too, he just doesn’t talk about it that much). 

Karen does not feel the fireworks with Arthur that she ever did with Matt, but she loves his constancy and the way that he makes sure that photos of her and Matt take a place of honour in the brownstone they move in to together in New York. She likes that he doesn’t want her to forget. 

He loves her enough and she loves him enough that they make things work. 

(Their first child, a little girl, is named Roberta.) 


End file.
